David Shaltiel

David Shaltiel (hebrew: דוד שאלתיאל, {B. 16 January 1903 Berlin - February 1969 Jerusalem) was an Israeli military and intelligence officer, later also diplomat, and was most well known for being the district commander of the Haganah in Jerusalem during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

He was born in Berlin into a Portuguese orthodox Jewish family settled in Hamburg., as oldest son of Benjamin Sealtiel and Helene Wormser. At 16, Shaltiel joined the Zionist youth movement Blau Weiss, and he went to Palestine in 1923. However, he was not happy there, and returned to Europe in 1925. From 1925-1930 he was enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. In 1934 he returned to Palestine. There he started working for the Haganah, being charged with buying arms in Europe. In 1936 he was captured in Aachen, Germany, by Gestapo. Shaltiel spent the three next years in prisons/ concentration camps, including Dachau and Buchenwald. When he was sent to Berlin in 1939 the Haganah succeeded in freeing him. He then went back to Palestine. There he was at first condemned to death for murder by the British, but a British War Council later acquitted him.

Shaltiel was married twice - first to Inge, then in 1942 to Yehudit, born Judith Irmgard Schonstedt (1913–2010), psychologist and daughter of a rabbinic family from Berlin. Shaltiel and Yehudit adopted a little girl, Tamar, who had to be returned to her biological mother. He died in Jerusalem in February 1969.

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